 Ideas are real things.
Ideas are not some meta-physical things that exist apart from real objects in a separate world of abstract objects. Ideas are actual physical objects with mass, not too different than a droplet of water, or a grain of sand.
How is this so? When we say "idea" in conversation we are really talking about two different things. The first thing is those energetic patterns existing in your own brain. Ideas are like the code that make up the software of your mind, which runs on the hardware of your brain. Those are "ideas": the energetic modules of brain code.
The second thing that "idea" has come to mean in conversation is what I call a "concept", like the number zero, or concept of equality. A concept is actually different than an idea. A concept is the set of all ideas (the things in your brain) that are similar across all minds.
No two ideas are alike -- the idea of "zero" as an energetic pattern in your brain is different than the idea of "zero" in my brain. Its just that "zero", as it exists in your brain, is similar enough to the one in my brain. They are so similar that we perceive the ideas as being equivalent, just like we perceive two droplets of water to be identical, even though there is no way the two could really be identical. So a concept is a set of all perceivably equivalent ideas. A concept does not exist until we perceive a similarity between ideas in your mind compared to my mind.
So ideas are just chemical energy structures in your brain. But remember, as Einstein said, energy is mass, therefore ideas are real things with mass.
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(By the way, it's all in your head.) |